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| | Dooney's Cafe (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-26) |
 | | On Feb. 17, 1869, after almost three continuous days of racking his brains over the problem of the elements, Mendeleyev was scheduled to catch a morning train to his country estate in the province of Tver where he was due to meet with a delegation of local cheese-makers and to tour the neighbouring farms. |
 | | At some point that morning, Mendeleyev, ruminating in his study, decided to postpone his departure to later that afternoon, and pulled out a pile of blank white cards, filling 63 of them with the weight and characteristic properties of the elements. |
 | | Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper." In his dream, Strathern says, "Mendeleyev had realized that when the elements were listed in the order of their atomic weights, their properties repeated in a series of periodic intervals. |
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